Activistunity 6-15
Unity, solidarity and equality take empathy Self-absorption destroys empathy. Our culture has the most sophisticated communications system in history, but what does it promote? Empathy or vanity? Compassion or egocentrism? Racism is an extreme form of egocentrism, but egocentrism is promoted as the 'way of the world' in our culture. That is the fatal mixed-message very few seem to notice. If you wonder why civil-rights activism has barely gained any ground in 50 years, take a look at how empathy is destroyed by social-conditioning in our country. There can be no justice in a spiritually dead culture. Emotional Competency When you say something like "people generally have 2 eyes and 2 ears", people won't argue. When you say "All people generally have the same physical and emotional needs", that's when people start to get confused. When you say "All people are born with the same capacity for emotions", expect to get the head turned sideways doggie expression: "Ruh?" People are confused about concepts that are not common knowledge. Our culture has always focused on the uniqueness of individuals overwhelmingly more than it does on the aspects of humanity we all share. 'Agenda Setting' means not telling you what to think, but what to think about. Our culture teaches to always focus on differences. Our culture sets the agenda for an egocentric culture. It teaches to derive self-esteem by being 'better than" the next person. The most attractive, the most wealthy, the most talented, the ones who win. Our cultural narratives sets the agenda for a war of ego against ego. You know intuitively that's what you experience in social situations. That egocentric 'emotional repertoire' cascades throughout our culture. Our political narratives both promote and normalize egocentrism while giving lip-service to equality and social harmony. That does not compute. Emotions don't work that way. That's the 'Big Lie' right in front of our faces that functions to normalize the structural violence in our society. Emotions are at the root of perception, language and behavior. The Big Lie that you can simultaneously promote egocentrism and solidarity sets the agenda for social strife. All social justice issues connect in that phony cultural paradigm. We don't get gender-rights, civil-rights, economic-rights, environmental stability or any other social justice in a culture with a phony and irrational concepts of emotions. The emotional competency of the entire culture is the social justice issue of the 21st century that precedes all others. Naming the Problem - The Mental Contagion We need to talk about American culture. Not our skin color, but our moral character. We've had the Marketing industry dictating our perceptions of the world for a century. Hows that working out? We judge the value of people by what they own and how much money they have. We have learned that it's acceptable to elevate ourselves by diminishing others. Compassion, Empathy and Solidarity of alien concepts in our cultural paradigm. Peace takes compassion, yet our culture teaches the opposite. No Americans are immune to the demoralizing effect of our culture of egotism. You can't fight a problem you fail to recognize. --- The cultural root of social strife Don't talk to me only about single issues like saving the earth or saving animals because those issues are rooted in the social-conditioning of the people. Don't talk to me only about gender or civil-rights if you don't know how compassion functions in humanity, because you won't have a clue about how to address those issues. We are taught how to deny the root cause of social strife because profits depend on us being ignorant and distracted. I think it's telling that often the only use of critical thinking on the part of many men comes in the form of how they analyze sports. In the same way, many women only use critical thinking when it comes to analyzing celebrities and fashion. This brain-dead culture must be transcended. --- The new paradigm - The mental antigen Justice in any form for all humanity is rooted in moral ethics. The level of social strife in our culture stems from our failure to promote compassion and critical thinking. Whatever single issue is dear to your heart, you need to rethink it. The corporate media will have countless ways to deflect from it's culpability, and will continue to present only an equivocated portrayal of social strife. Millions of Americans for whom only the corporate presentation of reality exists will continue to be utterly confused about the causes of social strife. Expect nothing but equivocation and confusion in the face of reality from mainstream narratives. The success of the Occupy was to influence public perception on one major meme: "The 99%". By now we should understand that was wealth inequality is not a cause but an effect. It's time to create a movement that addresses the cause. We can promote compassion and critical thinking in the form of a movement, or we can continue to fail spectacularly. There are so few people who understand the function of compassion to humanity that the first objective of such a movement must be to name the problem. There are so few people who embody the logic of compassion, that this movement must secondly be an educational movement towards emotional competence. --- Staying on message Once you see it, you can't unsee it. Our job #1 is to stay on message until everyone sees it. How compassion links to violence If violence in self-defense is justified, than the purest form of violence is in the defense of others. Compassion leads to righteous indignation and righteous indignation leads to fury. I'm not religious, but I do remember the religious stories that describe that sort of fury. I think when a person truly embodies compassion their emotions become predictable. Compassion has a logic to it that demands to be followed. The stories of Sodom and Gomorrah, and the stories of John Brown resonate with me at this point in time. It doesn't take a belief in god to understand the root of indignation in those stories, it takes humanity. In our time there's plenty for the righteous to be angry about. To upgrade those stories to be relevant in the 21st century takes provisional thinking. The fury of the righteous must be tempered with critical thinking. "Forgive them for they know not what they do" So that logic gets an upgrade for the 21st century. We don't stop at forgiveness. We forgive as away to model the emotional repertoire needed for a peaceful culture, but we also educate to create a rational culture. Forgiveness and education in this case can not be divorced. They can not function by themselves whatsoever. Compassion without critical thinking is ineffective. It's a religious sort of idea that we must condemn vanity. In a 21st century scientific understanding of emotions we know all the physical reasons why vanity and compassion can not co-exist. Science functions only as a confirmation of what people have known about emotions since antiquity. So none of that should be a mystery. None of this should be seen as religious, but should be seen as the critical thinking of compassionate people. When you ask for social justice you need to know what it is you are really asking for. Some of us have not had the capacity to understand the root of social strife stripped from us, but of course we do not control the people perceptions in the way that the greediest and the most vain do. If this absolute atheist sounds a bit to you like a religious zealot, you need to upgrade your concept of emotions and humanity to a 21st century understanding. The significant form of anger is that which is a consequence of compassion. That emotion alone is useless in the absence of an educational force needed for the world to understand the logic from which that anger is derived. When you see violence in the world, you have only to look at its form. Look significantly for the purest form. That anger is key for the redemption of humanity. Don't shy from it, embrace it. Do not however think it is an end in itself. It is merely a manifestation of compassion which is what we seek at the end of the struggle for justice. The metaphysics of social justice --- A contextual view of 'race'. Here's another case of once you see something, you can't unsee it. When I see the terms 'white people' and 'race' I can only see them as social constructs. I'm reminded of the time when Irish and Italians were considered Black. That concept was invented. It is a fiction in one absolute sense. In a subjective sense race is what people believe it to be. In the most significant sense it is the objective violence caused by subjective beliefs. When a Black person says to me "You're white" I know that opinion is based on the context of structural violence, and not the social-constructed context of the term. Having at least 3 contexts to the concept of race gives it an aspect of *indeterminacy*. Of course I'm a nerd, and I make an analogy to Quantum States. I am at the same time not white and white. I am certainly not solely my skin color. Our social justice narratives are crippled without this contextual view of reality. --- Get real What transcends social confusion is the metaphysical reality of the human condition. We are not our outward appearances, we are our inner character. If you want a realistic view of the world, you must put reality at the foundation. The idea that "Black people are this way, and white people are that way" is not reality. Reality is that we are a social species and we rise or fall together. We fall when we make outward appearance into something it isn't. We rise when we understand and respect what inner character is. Hold on for dear life to the metaphysical reality of the human condition. --- Symbols There you have the formula for structural violence in any context. A symbol created from a corrupt and subjective interpretation of reality leading to real and objective structural violence. The solution is to create symbols only from the truth of humanity. Given our currently Disney-like concept of humanity, that is a challenge going forward for our entire civilization. Timmy Smart